Scuppersisontheboat

Thank you! It’s just the 2 of us, I should have mentioned. I will check out the rail link. Given our limited time I think we will book specific trains. For some of my other cruise stops listed, someone mentioned the HOHO buses would be a good option? Thanks, Mark

Hello! After cruising around the canals of the Netherlands for a few days on a 40’ canal boat, we are doing a Celebrity British Isles cruise out of Amsterdam. We have never been to Ireland or the UK so are quite looking forward to it. We prefer seeing nature and the countryside, small towns to big cities, and touring by ourselves instead of in a group, and we rarely use ship excursions. Some places we will just rent a car, but I was hoping someone may have a favourite Uber or taxi driver that does tours, or a highly recommended local tour guide? The other main question is regarding Dover. Should we book train tix to London, the quick direct one is just over an hour each way. Has anyone done this on a day trip? I ain’t sitting on a bus 2.5 hours each way… I know I said we prefer small towns but figure we should get to see London. I am interested in the Dover Castle and other sights there, but there will be many castles on this trip and this is the only stop where there is time to get to London. What do you think? for towns with guides (or ideas of must do’s - I do have a nice summary generated and fine tuned by ChatGPT): lots of time in each port, with departures at 6 or 7pm. -Cork -Belfast -Greenock -Lerwick -Liverpool Thank you! Mark

Hey Dreamer, so you were on the Beyond Jan 22-29? So were we! We did a back to back Jan 15/23. If I recall correctly, there were 2900 on board, close to capacity but it didn’t feel too crowded to me. Could you please comment to me how that felt compared to HAL at capacity? I was getting a little spooked reading the HAL forum where there were like 600 kids on a holiday cruise.. I think it may be a function of Celebrity generally only having 2 per cabin, vs when I was poking around on the HAL site it would let me book 4 in most rooms, and even 5 in a suite, yikes!

Not trying to hijack the thread as my comment goes to the original crowding question - 600 children?!! I’m super glad I read this thread - I had started one under Celebrity asking Celebrity’ers about their experience with HAL and particularly the music walk. We’re fairly new cruisers and have been on Celebrity Beyond and Equinox. On a back to back on the Beyond in January I was blown away by the Broadway quality main shows and stage, the food was wonderful and I never felt crowded except if we timed breakfast wrong on a port day. We’re usually pretty good at avoiding the herds. Our boys are 22, 19 and 19, and we all like good music so the HAL Music Walk seems like a very attractive feature, we felt this was something lacking on our Celebrity experience. There were bands that would play in various locations at a variety of specific times, but not a dedicated space where music could always be found. However, this post is reminding me why we like Celebrity - no water slides or sport court, usually 2 or max 3 in a room (searching on the HAL site it would have let me put all 5 of us in a suite, OMG!) and premium prices tends to mean less kids. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike kids but in a confined space like a boat, screaming kids running around would drive me nuts. We watched a video of the Pinnacle class, I think the Statendam, and looking at pics of the MDR, the tables and chairs looked so close together I don’t see how people could even walk through? None of the 4 MDR’s or Blu on the Beyond had seating this tight. Anyway, this thread is giving me second thoughts as it is a holiday cruise I’m considering (on the Equinox it was a holiday cruise, but not a fair comparison as it was like 50% capacity, the Beyond sailing was nearly at capacity). Any of you who have been on both cruise lines, am I wrong?

What a great bunch of responses, this is golden, keep them coming! I’m glad I started this on the Celebrity forum as well, it gives an interesting perspective. Also I may be wrong, but I think more Celebrity cruisers have tried HaL but not the other way around. In January on Celebrity Beyond I thought the choices of food, and the food itself was exceptional. The theatre shows were Broadway / Vegas quality. We did check out the bands and entertainers in various venues like Eden, etc, but I really like the idea of the dedicated Music Walk on HAL. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

We have been on 3 Celebrity cruises, Equinox, Beyond and Beyond, and have really enjoyed the quality of food, the service and the ship itself. On the River cruise forum when I mentioned music, someone nicely suggested the Music Walk on Holland’s 3 largest ships, so I checked out a few videos and it looks awesome. I don’t understand why Celebrity doesn’t do a piano bar with a pianist who can take requests and play all the hits, it makes for a great evening. So anyway, we are thinking of doing a cruise on Holland America to check it out. Those of you who have been on the Rotterdam or sisterships, would you say we should go for it, or no? All our Celebrity sailings were moderately, but not completely full of PAX, everything else being equal will we notice more crowding? The pics of the MDR on the Rotterdam look like they have jammed a lot more tables than on Celebrity. Any thoughts will be appreciated, thanks!

Thanks all, many many good points! We will not worry about age and concentrate on the destination, which realistically is what we usually do. We always do stuff last minute, so looking for a late May / early June 2023 trip, with AMA, Scenic, Uniworld, or Viking depending on itinerary and cost. thanks again for all the input.

Yep something like that. The lovely Celebrity person making our booking said it defaults to that. We went whenever we wanted, but outside of normal herd times. Ideally as the early show started or 5 min before it let out.

Blu menu Jan 18 on Beyond below, plus you could always order any of the Signatures from the other restaurants, just not their exclusives. To each their own, overall we were just very impressed with Blu - there were a couple nights when we weren’t in the mood for what was on the menu, so we went elsewhere.

OBC refund? Is that a Retreat only thing?

Hi! Ok, I had to look on the deck plan to make sure I was remembering correctly, and it’s not even shown. Look at the Beyond plan on deck 14 you see the Sea Thermal suite that you have free access to with Aqua. We only used it a couple of times but it is quite pleasant. That area has full size windows facing the bow. Port side, in the corridor of this Sea thermal suite there is a door leading directly outside to a nice area, a few hundred sq feet, directly in front of those windows. I suspect people would use it for yoga if you bring a mat, there are no chairs and it is obviously windy, but it is a nice place to hang out leaning on the railing. Again, we both really enjoyed Blu with the selection and quality of the menu. We honestly couldn’t figure out why anyone would need to bother with ‘specialty’ dining when they had access to Blu.

They will assign you a reservation time at time of booking the cruise, ours was 6:00 and we never used it.

Oh, and we never used a reservation for dinner. Just timed showing up about 10 min before the first show started, or 15 min before it let out. Everybody and their dog goes to eat at 6:00, just don’t go then.

Yes you can. Or those might be nights when you will go to Normandie or Tuscan etc. I’m with you on those - I’ll very rarely have lamb, never veal, only occasionally seafood. You will always have a chicken choice too. In Blu, I would have had no problem asking them for something different with a days notice. They were all lovely.

Many shower heads yes. The complementary heated tile loungers and steam rooms were nice, also access to the bow of the ship. The biggest thing we enjoyed was Blu. We really enjoyed the exclusivity (less crowded?) and the menu was wonderful. Disclaimer - except the first night on both our B2B’s, but that is normal across the board. If doing it again numerically, I would probably pay $500 each extra for aqua.